The Space Cookies also share with other robo-girls. When Presentation High School, of San Jose, wanted to start an all-girl robotics team, the Space Cookies provided mentors and equipment parts to launch the Invasion team in 2007. Francesca Lomotan, a senior on the team, recruited 32 girls from within her all-girl school.

At this year’s Silicon Valley Regional, three of the all-girl teams advanced to the elimination rounds. The Royal Robotrons of Louisville High School in Woodland Hills, Calif., began in the seventh slot, the highest seed among the all-girl teams. They picked the all-boy Cheesypoofs of Bellarmine College Preparatory, in San Jose, and the all-girl Fembots of St. Francis High School as their alliance partners. The all-girl Gatorbotics, from Palo Alto’s Castilleja School, accepted an invitation to join the sixth-seeded alliance of two coed teams.

The next year, though, Varanelli moved to Pope John XXIII Regional High School, in Sparta, N.J., which lacked a robotics program. With support from the school’s principal and a guidance counselor, in 2004 she founded the LionHearts team, recruiting members, finding a faculty mentor, and raising US $30 000 during her three years as president.

Now she’s studying mechanical engineering at Worcester Polytechnic Institute and serving as a mentor herself for a coed team called Gompei at the Massachusetts Academy of Math and Science, also in Worchester. She advises girls to ignore social stereotypes and tells them, “just do what you love, and don’t do it for anyone else.”

Robo-girls do just that-and sometimes remind observers that they are, indeed, girls. At the 2006 Sacramento regional, the Fembots discovered leftover parts from the FIRST kit of robot components and designed their own brand of robo jewelry, sharing the highly coveted necklaces, earrings, and bracelets with other robo-girls.

The Space Cookies also share with other robo-girls. When Presentation High School, of San Jose, wanted to start an all-girl robotics team, the Space Cookies provided mentors and equipment parts to launch the Invasion team in 2007. Francesca Lomotan, a senior on the team, recruited 32 girls from within her all-girl school.

At this year’s Silicon Valley Regional, three of the all-girl teams advanced to the elimination rounds. The Royal Robotrons of Louisville High School in Woodland Hills, Calif., began in the seventh slot, the highest seed among the all-girl teams. They picked the all-boy Cheesypoofs of Bellarmine College Preparatory, in San Jose, and the all-girl Fembots of St. Francis High School as their alliance partners. The all-girl Gatorbotics, from Palo Alto’s Castilleja School, accepted an invitation to join the sixth-seeded alliance of two coed teams.

The next year, though, Varanelli moved to Pope John XXIII Regional High School, in Sparta, N.J., which lacked a robotics program. With support from the school’s principal and a guidance counselor, in 2004 she founded the LionHearts team, recruiting members, finding a faculty mentor, and raising US $30 000 during her three years as president.

Now she’s studying mechanical engineering at Worcester Polytechnic Institute and serving as a mentor herself for a coed team called Gompei at the Massachusetts Academy of Math and Science, also in Worchester. She advises girls to ignore social stereotypes and tells them, “just do what you love, and don’t do it for anyone else.”

Robo-girls do just that-and sometimes remind observers that they are, indeed, girls. At the 2006 Sacramento regional, the Fembots discovered leftover parts from the FIRST kit of robot components and designed their own brand of robo jewelry, sharing the highly coveted necklaces, earrings, and bracelets with other robo-girls.

Elena Livek’s story began in a classroom at Notre Dame High in San Jose. “My friend and I were serving detention, and there was this robot in there, and I asked about it,” she says. Impressed with what she learned, Elena joined Jankster, a new robotics team that had only enough resources to attend a single competitive event. The Silicon Valley match for the Jankster team was all or nothing.

For veteran all-girl teams, however-like the Muses, of The Archer School for Girls, in Los Angeles, and the Fembots, of St. Francis High School, in Sacramento, Calif.—competing at Silicon Valley would follow matches in several other regional events, increasing their chances of making it to the national competition.

As for Sabrina Varanelli, she traces her interest back to the second grade, when she decided she would work for NASA when she grew up. Years later, as a freshman at St. Francis High, she noticed a NASA sticker on a robot during a club fair and joined the robot team—the Fembots.

Elena Livek’s story began in a classroom at Notre Dame High in San Jose. “My friend and I were serving detention, and there was this robot in there, and I asked about it,” she says. Impressed with what she learned, Elena joined Jankster, a new robotics team that had only enough resources to attend a single competitive event. The Silicon Valley match for the Jankster team was all or nothing.

For veteran all-girl teams, however-like the Muses, of The Archer School for Girls, in Los Angeles, and the Fembots, of St. Francis High School, in Sacramento, Calif.—competing at Silicon Valley would follow matches in several other regional events, increasing their chances of making it to the national competition.

As for Sabrina Varanelli, she traces her interest back to the second grade, when she decided she would work for NASA when she grew up. Years later, as a freshman at St. Francis High, she noticed a NASA sticker on a robot during a club fair and joined the robot team—the Fembots.

The criticism that today’s roboticists need to focus harder on real world applications is a fair one. For new technologies to survive and find revenue support they need to prove their viability at improving our lives. Self parking cars that only work half assed are not particularly useful integrations of robotics into our lives.

Such “innovations” are gimmicks at best. We know how to park our damn cars. We’ve been doing it for 100 years. What next, a robot that helps me scoot my chair in? The Roomba was a great application of robotics to the consumer market space, hence it’s tremendous success. People want to see this kind of integration repeated.

I’m okay with being harsh on roboticists (including myself) because we all need consistent reminders that the market place is harshly Darwinian. Just because WE may be able to imagine wonderful uses for the technologies we play with in the lab, doesn’t mean they have any real world viability in the current market place today. That’s a problem. Research dollars only take you so far. Eventually you have to create something people can use. Tough love is a good thing. It helps keep us focused on the task at hand, and that is building useful technologies.

While article submission or article marketing is a powerful means of driving targeted traffic, it is only effective if you submit your article to many directories. The manual process of submitting your articles to the thousands of online article submission directories can be extremely tedious and time-consuming.

It probably takes you several days to a week to post one article to 500 – 1000 article submission directories. We hate data entry. What about you?

Whoever came up with article submission software are really geniuses. Seeing the merit in distributing articles to as many article directories as possible, software developer often authors themselves developed state-of-the-art article submission software to automate or semi-automate manual tasks like filling the blank fields in article submission forms and submitting to each directory one by one systematically.

While article submission or article marketing is a powerful means of driving targeted traffic, it is only effective if you submit your article to many directories. The manual process of submitting your articles to the thousands of online article submission directories can be extremely tedious and time-consuming.

It probably takes you several days to a week to post one article to 500 – 1000 article submission directories. We hate data entry. What about you?

Whoever came up with article submission software are really geniuses. Seeing the merit in distributing articles to as many article directories as possible, software developer often authors themselves developed state-of-the-art article submission software to automate or semi-automate manual tasks like filling the blank fields in article submission forms and submitting to each directory one by one systematically.

A well written article that is optimized for specific keywords may get to rank high in the search engine results. Search engine traffic, also known as organic traffic is one of the most targeted traffic you can get for your website. Imagine your article is featured in the major search engines like Google, Yahoo and MSN on page 1 for your keyword. Wow! Be prepared for a huge avalanche of traffic, get more Adsense income, make more sales, and recruit more subscribers for your ezine list.